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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Seen, Heard, Noted & Quoted
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by morgan henley freefunk322@aol.com
A Rated R 82 min.
Offensive, politically incorrect, shocking, and hilarious, Borat is probably going to be one of the funniest movies you will see this year, and most talked about too. The hype surrounding this film alone will probably drive you to see it, and the hype is well deserved.
Sacha Baron Cohen created and stars as the character Borat, a reporter from the nation of Kazakhstan who is sent to America to help with cultural relations for Kazakhstan. The title alone can give you a pretty good preview of the entire movie, it’s ridiculous, outrageous, and offensive. Cohen spared no ethnicity, creed, religion, or race in this mocumentary. Borat is a socially retarded, yet loveable, idiot who meets many diverse kinds of people in his trek across America. His broken English and oblivion to American customs makes for interesting fare. He is followed by his film producer Azamat, who serves to control and watch over Borat. Borat has no reservations and goes places you would have never imagined he would.
The entire film of Borat is consistently funny with Borat on an intensive search for the love of his life, Baywatch star, Pamela Anderson. He discovers her while watching reruns of Baywatch on TV after he had just arrived to the land of America. He then moves from his real intent of his voyage to America from making a documentary about Americans for Kazakhstan to trying to meet his beloved Baywatch character. He learns that Ms. Anderson lives in Los Angeles, California and he then immediately wants to leave New York City, where he had planned on staying, and traveling across the country to California to meet her.
Sadly truthful, you will probably leave the theater with at least thinking to yourself once that you’ve seen one of the stereotyped characters that Borat meets. Refreshingly real, the mocumentary style helps Borat shine in being an anomaly to many of the mainstream comedies we can expect. The reactions of the people in the film come across as truly genuine, as many of them did not realize that Borat was not a real reporter and they had not signed release forms for a documentary in which Borat was really reporting. It pokes fun mainly at the different groups in American culture such as the Southern frat boy, black Atlanta thugs, white mid-west farmers, sexually adventurous homosexual males, and the Southern white society type.
Borat is the offspring of Cohen’s HBO comedy series Da Ali G Show, where he was first released as a character. If you’ve ever seen Da Ali G Show, you can pretty much know what to expect from Borat. Cohen has taken this small brief skit from his show and made it into a full length feature film, and did it surprisingly well. His antic road trip is never dull and filled with lots of great satire and slap stick.
Now, Borat is far from a family film or one for the easily offended either. Probably most liked by the South Park or Daily Show crowd, this satire is a strong social commentary about our wonderful United States. How this movie was released, truly is a wonder in itself. The country of Kazakhstan is appalled by the film and has threatened legal action, but their reaction only has boosted the film’s buzz.
A sense of social irresponsibility might be felt by Cohen as sometimes his jokes are blurred between real and fake. Similar to the “racist” style jokes of the Chapelle Show or South Park, Cohen has gone where few comedians like, and have the guts, to go. With a strong underlying theme of American ignorance, it almost alienates too many with its humor. But, as extreme as it is, hopefully everyone will get the joke.
There’s a grain of truth in some of the satire about The Republic of Kazakhstan. When Borat indicates he’ll be executed if you don’t like his movie, it’s an exaggeration of the truth. Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev is the real-life president of the country. Internationally, controversy has surrounded Nazarbayev because of his authoritarian policies and because several vocal opposing politicians have been murdered. Part of the political landscape since before Kazakhstan nixed Communism, Nazarbayev was elected President in 1991. He’s been re-elected ever since, but the legitimacy of the elections has been questioned by various international agencies. The death and disqualification of opponents and the administration’s chokehold on the media are all things that Sacha Baron Cohen latched on in his satire.
Kazakhstan has been trying to gain some measure of respect in the international community, something that is difficult given their near-dictatorship and one-party system. Democracy has become the golden key that opens many doors, and, because of that those in power have at least gone through the motions of a democratic society. Fortunately, Borat might cause world leaders to take a closer look at the country’s policies. Borat is filled with outrageous lies, parody and exaggerations, but the country immediately hired PR people to try and reverse the damage done to their image, taking out a several page ad in the New York Times. Cohen, of course, loved that his satire got a response from an actual government and simply incorporated it into his own PR blitz for the movie, even holding a mock press conference in front of the White House. Perhaps the most telling move on the part of the Kazakhstan government was the removal of Borat’s website www.borat.kz by the Kazakhstan government. After it was removed, one of President Nazarbayev’s daughters, Dariga Nazarbayev, the former head of the state news agency commented that removing the website damaged the country’s image much more than the site itself. “We should not be afraid of humor and we shouldn’t try to control everything, I think,” said Dargia Nazarbayev. She is considered the leading candidate for Presidency after her father retires.
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